OT: 30 for 30 - LA Raiders

I don't know...I've liked most of these a lot, with maybe an exception or two...but this one may have been the weakest. The LA part was 13 years of their history, but that team belongs to Oakland, not LA.

It also comes off a bit like a Behind the Music special. And it's a bit oversold. The Raiders were the cool team before they went to LA. The football merchandising boom just happened to be at that time. And yes, rap helped make things cool, but hell, eventually everything they wore did that (Nelly...St. Louis anyone?).

It was funny to see the hype on both sides. The idea that rap was going to be the end of society. And on the other side that the rappers were poet outlaws (who then all sold out...original "cop killa" Ice-T, now playing a cop always makes me chuckle).

Couple other images:

Olbermann- nice stache! Not.

Guy wanting to blame Shanahan for Raiders demise- considering how the future for him and that team went for the following decades...

And has Al Davis become a leper? Geeze. He looks like he's already died, and been dug up again.

Edit: The new formatting makes mobile devices and paragraph spaces not friends.

I'm not sure you can fully understand unless you're in L.A. The film made it more about gangster rap linked to the L.A. Raiders, but I believe the point should have been the Raiders and their fans who are actual gang bangers. In the film they mentioned blacks more than Mexicans, but I'd say that Mexicans make up at least 80% of the current Raiders fans that are in L.A. Now if you want to break that down, most of them are some shady looking characters, who you would probably guess are gangsters. Also, I wouldn't say that the merchandise boom was a coincidance. As far as I'm concerned, it's because of rappers that Starter hats and jackets were the hottest thing in the streets.

and I believe it to be revisionist history. Sure, the LA Raiders can be put to an NWA soundtrack, but I was alive and very into sports if not during that time, then immediately afterward, and there was not a heavy Raiders-LA Gangster culture link visible to the public at large. Sure, you could catch a rapper sporting a Raiders hat just as you could find one sporting a Michigan hat or a Dodgers coat. I thought the Miami one actually encompassed a good "sports-culture" link and I think that the actual events that transpired were in line with the historical analysis, not so with the Raiders, I think ESPN is running out of directors and topics. Maybe 27 for 30 would have done.

The Miami one was cool for about half an hour until they kept interviewing the same has-beens talking about how badass Miami was off the field because they made it badass blah blah blah. Sweet.....you scored and talked a lot of shit, you're really fucking sweet. Like I said...cool for a bit, then it got old.

I havent watched this one yet, it's DVR'd so I'll watch it soon, but in general I've been very happy with the 30 for 30s, the one exception being "Silly little game" the rotisserie baseball one - i just didnt like how they did it or filmed it.

Run Ricky Run was great, as was the 16th Man - tells the sports side of invictus.

And any talk of football and rap would be remiss without the greatest awful rap song ever

I thought the Iverson one was the other they kind of faltered on. And I think the Len Bias one, though a bit overdone, was pretty good, but really seemed lost for an ending. This was the first that I thought wasn't particularly well done, and wasn't important. I mean, covering the Knicks-Pacers rivalry with zero champions just because New York was involved when Celtics-Sixers, Celtics-Lakers (been done), Celtics-Pistons, Pistons-Bulls were all better rivalries (especially the later ones) seemed gratuitious...but very well done.

That's because Simmons is obsessed with the NBA and thinks all these minor (in the big picture) basketball side-stories are gripping. Between those and the Rugby think, I almost think he's too involved in what they're choosing to do. (He's said he's on the committee that selected them).

I watched 'Kings Ransom' about the Wayne Gretzky trade. I was very intrigued about the the whole idea of the trade and how it came to be. I already knew most of the story, but they made it sound like people really had no idea what happened. Turns out I wasted an hour watching what took me 10 mins to read on Wikipedia. I have yet to watch a 30 for 30 since.

I'm going to watch 'The U.' Maybe I will watch 'Run Ricky Run.' The ones I'm interested in are coming out later this year. OJ Simpson's car chase. Steve Bartman. Jordan playing minor league baseball. The night Tupac died after the Tyson fight.